Page 120 of Hot Summer Nights

Oliver has been nothing but supportive, helping me out by taste-testing different recipes and giving me encouragement when something doesn’t turn out the way it should. Plus, he helps me burn off all of the extra calories that I’ve been eating in the bedroom.

He’s still as insatiable for me as he was the first time, we made love. I love that he can’t keep his hands off me and it works well because I can’t keep mine of him either. We make love every night before we fall asleep and he wakes me up every morning between my legs.

I’ve never been this happy and content in my life. I never even thought that it was possible to feel like this. I wish that we could spend the rest of our lives like this. I think that Oliver feels the same way. He seems so relaxed and happy when we’re together. The thing is that we haven’t said I love you yet. I definitely love him but I wanted to wait until he said it first. I don’t want to freak him out.

I check the clock and realize that Oliver will be home any minute now. He always comes home right at 5 pm nowadays and we spend our nights eating dinner together, cleaning up the dishes and usually cuddling and watching movies or tv together or playing a board game before he takes me to bed and we make love. Sometimes we go out on dates too. He’s taken me to all of the tourist locations like the Bellagio fountains and the high roller, out to dinner at all of the fancy top name restaurants, and we even went gambling a few times.

The oven timer goes off as the elevator doors open. I take the baked chicken and roasted vegetables out of the oven and turn to get my kiss from Oliver. I smile against his lips as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me into him further.

“Dinner smells delicious baby.” He says before giving me another peck on the lips.

“I just pulled it out of the oven. Go ahead and sit down and we can eat.”

As he does what I ask and I dish out the food onto two plates I wonder if I should just grow up and tell him how I feel. Even if he doesn’t say it back or isn’t ready to yet then at least I’ll have tried. Plus, with the way he treats me, I feel like he must feel the same. I decide that after dinner I’ll tell him. I just hope that he loves me too.

NINE

OLIVER

Harper has seemed off all night. She seemed tense and nervous during dinner and not having her be her normal happy self has made me feel anxious. I’ve been giving her time to tell me what’s wrong but it’s getting to be too much. I need to know what is wrong so I can figure out how to fix it. I need to see her smiling and laughing again, not shooting me these worried side glances.

I also have something that I wanted to talk to her about and I was worried about how she would react to it before whatever has her spooked happened. My parents have been pushing to meet her for the last couple of weeks but I’ve been putting them off. I didn’t want to scare her with how fast everything was moving and I wanted us to have some alone time together to really get to know each other before I had them meet.

Things have been going so well that I thought she was ready and I invited them for dinner tomorrow night. I was going to tell her tonight over dinner but she’s been so silent and I wanted to build up to it.

Whatever she’s worried about is throwing me off and messing up my plans. I was supposed to tell her about dinner with my parents tonight and spend the rest of the night calming any fears or stress she had about it. Then, tomorrow we would have dinner and my parents would love her because how could they not? She’s perfect and perfect for me.

Once dinner was over, we would come back here and I would have everything set up. I would tell her how happy she made me and how much I loved her and then I would ask her to be my wife and spend the rest of her life with me. I prayed she would say yes and we could spend the rest of the night celebrating.

I need to get this plan back on track and so I decide to just ask her what’s wrong.

“Everything alright babe?”

“Yeah, I’ve just been feeling tired lately. I think I’ll turn in early tonight.”

She makes a move to stand up and I reach out grabbing her arm and making her look up at me. I study her face and notice that she does have small dark circles under her eyes.

Instantly, I feel guilty for keeping her up most nights making love to her. I should have noticed that she was feeling tired and let her get her rest. I decided to surprise her with a spa day tomorrow so she can really relax and be pampered. I need to tell her about dinner though tonight so I don’t just springe it on her tomorrow.

I turn the tv off and stand from the couch, gripping her hand and pulling her up with me so we can walk down the hallway together. We get ready for bed together and as we slip under the covers together and I wrap her in my arms I tell her about my talk with my parents.

“I talked to my mom and dad today.” I start.

“Oh. How are they? Is everything alright?”

I’ve toldher about them before and it’s nice to know that she seems to care about them already even though she’s never met them. I love how sweet and caring she is with me. When she talks to other people, she’s pretty standoffish until she trusts the person and then she relaxes and becomes the sweet woman that I know and love.

“Yeah. They’re doing great. They actually want to meet you. They’ve been dying to get together with us for the last couple of weeks and I was thinking that we could have dinner with them tomorrow if that’s alright with you?”

“Sure, that sounds like fun.”

I’m surprised at how relieved she sounds about meeting my parents. I expected her to be nervous or scared about it. Maybe even say that we were moving too fast or something but I feel her body relax after I’ve asked her. Shrugging that off, I just give her a kiss on her shoulder before I tuck her into me and we both fall asleep.

TEN

HARPER

I wake up the next morning in bed alone. I reach my hand over to Oliver’s side of the bed but the sheets are cold. I don’t hear the shower on or any movement in the bathroom so I guess he went to work already. I remember the night before and how he asked me to meet his parents. I had been so worked up about telling him I love him and how he would react but he wants me to meet his parents. That has to be a good sign. If this wasn’t real, he wouldn’t introduce me to them.

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